Faced with a challenge, Joe initially thought to utilize the teams under him. With the addition of two or three teams, he had no doubt in the outcome. Some minor injuries were unavoidable, but the outcome would be guaranteed.
After some deliberation, Joe unsheathed the daggers strapped to his lower back. Taking an aggressive stance, he prepared himself to kick off and rush the outer most beasts. Until now, he had avoided fighting and was focused solely on the progress of his classmates.
Now, even with a continuous slow of data coming to him, Joe was able to update the situation in live time while gauging the difficulty of this pending battle.
"What's the point of growing stronger if I can't show the results by my own hands?"
With his decision made, Joe charged a fox. In half the time it'd take any normal person to blink, he drove the dagger in his left hand deep into the breast of the fox. With a single, decisive strike Joe had removed some of the treat that had showed itself in front of him.
With the realization that their enemy wasn't to be taken lightly, the remaining ten beasts encircled Joe. Their red fur stood on end as they all began to register that the fight ahead would not be as simple as their typical daily hunt. The Level Zero beasts that the pack would devour daily paled in comparison to the deadly aura radiating off this single human.
A single fox squared off with Joe before giving an intimidating growl. At its command, the other nine jolted to life and began assaulting the location Joe had just stood. When the air cleared, a look of surprise covered the apparent Alpha. Not a trace of the human remained. No blood was spilt on the ground and no clothing had been torn.
A loud boom reverberated through the air above their heads. Looking up, the Alpha was met with the sight of a dagger being driven towards its face. There was no time to react before it plunged itself into its skull. With the hilt cracking the bone between the two-pointed ears, the tip of the blade dripped blood from the bottom of the fox's jaw.
With the dagger being torn away from the gaping hole it had made, the body of the Alpha was thrown nearly ten feet before it began to form a pool of blood from the two foreign holes. Of the nine remaining beasts, only one reacted in rage.
The other eight were frozen in fear. Countless days were spent hunting lesser beast and showing them no mercy. Today was expected to go the same as any other day. To their dismay, they managed to provoke a monster far more terrifying than the other beasts they had encounter in this forest.
The enraged fox gave a command for the pack to attack together. Six of the nine rushed directly forward while three seemed to lag. Just as the six were about to reach him, Joe kicked forward and up. He propelled himself over the six and was meet with the remaining three whom had jumped as if to cut off his escape.
Redirecting his momentum midair, Joe plunged each of his daggers into the outermost beasts while his foot caught the chest of the third. Hitting the ground, a loud series of snaps echoed throughout the area as the force of his kick shattered every rib in the fox's chest.
Coming back to his feet, a crimson liquid flooded the ground in which Joe stood. Aside from the dripping from the two daggers, the same crimson color had splashed itself over his face. The remaining six beasts were met with a menacing white smile that pierced though their companions' blood.
The blue eyes that were aimed at them showed a sense of satisfaction once they say the fear welling up within the beasts. For months, Joe had been training and training with only an ideological goal in mind. Today, he was given tangible proof of his growth.
From his pale and weak ten-year-old self that had to use every ounce of strength he had just to take the life of a single man, he now stood with enough power to strike fear into otherwise fearless beasts.
In the early stages after the nuclear wars, mankind saw the emerging beasts as monster straight out of their own nightmares. In the years since then, the beasts' reputation had dwindled to an inconvenient threat to the average person. Today, for the first time since the rising of the awakened, the beasts were seeing a human being as a monster.
The remaining six beast made the decision to retreat and turned to do so. Before they could even take a single step away from him, Joe had already descended on them with a menacing laugh. He realized how he was viewed from their eyes and simply found it amusing. Still, these eleven kills would push his squad passed the halfway mark of their quota. He wasn't going to let them escape.
The remained beasts were met with a quick and decisive death. Taking a moment to breath, Joe collected himself as he stared down at the lifeless corpses he had created. He remembered back to that fateful night. The night he took the life of Micky Jordans. In that moment, he felt a lifetime of stress leave him as relief set in that his struggle was finally over, he had his revenge.
Faced with the bloodied remains, Joe found that he wasn't numb to death. He became excited at the idea that he could bring death to a being that held the potential to take lives itself. Removing all emotions from his face, Joe began moving from each of his kills and tore out the awakened cores held within their chest.
These cores were present in every beast starting at Level Zero. Their clarity indicated the level of the beast it came from. Ten of the eleven were opaque while the final held a slightly more lustrous glimmer. The Alpha was nearing a breakthrough into being a Level Two beast. Now, it lay dead on the same forest floor that it had killed countless other beasts.